This study addresses the question of whether rail passenger vehicles with more sophisticated (and more expensive) suspensions can operate on rougher (and less expensive) track with an overall lower net cost for the guideway-vehicle system. Four suspensions, representing a range of performance and cost, are optimized for operation on the roughest possible track. The cost of each suspension and its guideway is estimated. Two of the advanced guideway-vehicle systems appear to result in an overall cost savings. However, because of uncertainties in the estimates of guideway maintenance cost, these conclusions are regarded as illustrative of our methodology rather than quantitatively reliable.

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The problem of a causal transient plane wave incident at an arbitrary angle on a lossy half-space is considered. The classical frequency domain reflection coefficients are inverted to the time domain through a detailed analysis of the singularities in the complex frequency plane. Numerical results are included for a lossy earth. Some peculiarities associated with Brewster's angle are discussed.

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